Love, Joe : The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard

An artist and writer whose charming and inventive works are at once modest and ambitious, Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Widely known for his influential experimental memoir, I Remember, Brainard worked in a variety of forms, from New York School–aligned poetry to Pop Art–adjacent artworks, including wild riffs on the comic strip character Nancy. His art drew on the everyday and popular culture, exuding a sense of amiability, wit, and generosity.

Love, Joe presents a selection of Brainard’s letters stretching from 1959 to 1993, offering an intimate view of his personal and artistic life. They allow readers to witness an extraordinarily fertile moment in New York’s history, when literary and visual arts intersected with happenings, proto-punk and psychedelic rock concerts, and experimental music and dance performances. Brainard’s letters to his partner, Kenward Elmslie, and others also open a window onto the transformations of queer life during this period. His correspondents include poet and artist friends such as John Ashbery, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Fairfield Porter, Ron Padgett, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Alex Katz, and Andy Warhol, as well as lovers, patrons, high school friends, and fans. At once an insider’s view of the art and literary worlds and a revelation of Brainard’s creative process, these letters invite readers to share in his radical but gentle candor, his open-mindedness, and a sophisticated naiveté that helped him erase the conventional barriers between art and life.

Joe Brainard (1942–1994) was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and moved to New York City in 1960. He was a prolific writer and artist across media, including paintings, collages, assemblages, and comic-strip collaborations with poets. His I Remember has been translated into fifteen languages, and his artworks are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and many others. He died from AIDS-related pneumonia.

Daniel Kane is a professor of American literature at Uppsala University. His books include All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (2003); We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry (2009); and “Do You Have a Band?”: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City (Columbia, 2017).